Barbri - MBE Practice Questions Set with Answers

A defendant is on trial for murder. The only evidence linking the defendant to the crime is some blood found at the scene. The lead detective testifies that an officer took a vial containing a blood sample that had been retrieved by a crime scene technician and drove off with it. The officer is now dead. Next, the prosecution presents as a witness a crime lab chemist. The chemist will testify that he took a vial of blood that contained a label identifying it as having been retrieved from the subject crime scene, and that he performed tests that established a match between that blood and a blood sample taken from the defendant. Is the testimony of the chemist admissible? A) Yes, because there has been proper authentication. B) Yes, because the chemist qualifies as an expert witness. C) No, because there is insufficient evidence of chain of custody. D) No, because he did not take the original blood sample at the sc C) No, because there is insufficient evidence of chain of custody. The testimony is inadmissible because it has not been shown what happened to the blood between the time the officer took it and the time the chemist examined it. Real evidence presents an object in issue directly to the trier of fact. One of the general requirements for admissibility of real evidence is that it be authenticated; i.e., that it be identified as being what its proponent claims it is. If the evidence is of a type that is likely to be confused or can be easily tampered with, the proponent of the object must present evidence of chain of custody. The proponent must show that the object has been held in a substantially unbroken chain of possession. It is not necessary to negate all possibilities of substitution or tampering; rather, what is required is to show adherence to some system of identification and custody. Here, the proponent of the blood sample (the prosecution) has not shown what the officer did with it after leaving the crime scene. There is no showing that the vial was placed directly in a properly secured area so as to diminish the possibility of tampering. In short, it has not been demonstrated that there was adherence to some defined system of identification and custody. A federal statute just signed into law by the President provided that school districts no longer needed to recognize the tenure of elementary school teachers—all tenured teachers would lose their status and would be treated the same as nontenured teachers. The effect of the law would be to allow all tenured teachers to be fired more easily if their performance was not adequate. The law also allowed the salaries of tenured teachers to be lowered, at least until a new contract with the teachers could be negotiated. The law had a two-year grace period before it was to take effect, to give schools and teachers time to adjust to the law; however, it specifically provided that once it is in effect, school board actions under the law supersede any existing contract terms. A public elementary school district is in the first year of a three-year union contract with its teachers. The school board has stated that it plans to ab No, because a ruling on the law at this point is premature. The federal court should not hear the case because it is not yet ripe for review. A federal court will not hear a case unless there exists a "case and controversy." This has been interpreted to mean, among other things, that a plaintiff generally is not entitled to review of his claim unless he has been harmed or there is an immediate threat of harm. This is to prevent the federal courts from hearing unnecessary actions. There is no immediate threat of harm to the union here because the law does not take effect for another two years. Before that happens, Congress might change the law or repeal it altogether, or the school board may decide to keep the old contract system after all An insurer offered a plan to cover an insured's catastrophic illnesses for the remainder of the insured's life in exchange for a large one-time payment at the inception of coverage. Because the program was experimental, the insurer would accept only a fixed number of applications during the enrollment period. A recent retiree in good health was one of the applicants accepted, and he enrolled in the program. He paid the one-time premium of $30,000 a few days before coverage began. The day after his coverage started, he was struck by a bus and killed. The executor of the retiree's estate reviewed the policy and immediately notified the bank to stop payment on it. The insurer then filed suit against the retiree's estate. Will the court compel the estate to pay the premium to the insurer? A) Yes, because the insurer necessarily declined to take another applicant during the enrollment period because of the retiree's prom Yes, because the risk of the timing of the retiree's death was assumed by both parties and built into the cost of the contract. In entering into the contract, the possibility that the retiree would die shortly after paying the premium and therefore receive virtually nothing in return should have been apparent to both parties. Actually, both parties took risks in this regard, as the retiree could have incurred medical expenses for a catastrophic illness during his lifetime that would have required the insurer to make payments far exceeding the one-time $30,000 premium. The retiree and the insurer were equally aware of these various possibilities, yet they freely entered into an agreement with this knowledge and on terms that were apparently acceptable to each of them. =